


Season of Scars

by asktheravens



Series: Nurse Loki Series [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, Fluffy, Gen, Holidays, Thor and Tony are BFFs, femme Loki, nurse!Loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 18:46:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1163201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asktheravens/pseuds/asktheravens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony came down to help his friend finish his Master's, but it turns out Thor has a different sort of plan for his winter break.  What he needs is a miracle, and Tony is fresh out.</p>
<p>Sequel to Customer Loyalty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Season of Scars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thebirdinyourhead](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebirdinyourhead/gifts).



> If you haven't read Customer Loyalty, you might want to do that first. This is, once again, for my lovely wife, and for everyone else who liked this series.
> 
> It has awesome art! Check it out: http://alittlethor.tumblr.com/post/68940043876/
> 
> There is some Steve/Tony here, more than implied but far in the distance.

Tony dropped his duffel on Thor’s floor and before he even took his coat off, he said, “All right Big Guy, let’s see it.”  To his surprise, Thor flushed deep red, but he patted his own battered parka and fished a little black velvet box out of one of the interior pockets.  He pried it open and held it out for Tony to inspect its contents.  A dainty ring glinted in the satin crease, three tiny diamonds flush in an Art Deco style setting.

“Do you think she’ll like it?” Thor asked, so earnest that even Tony’s cynical heart cracked a little.

“I thought I was here to figure out why your forge can’t melt iron, but clearly you have a bigger problem for me to wrangle.”  Tony took the box, though Thor looked reluctant to let it go, and examined it.  “Pretty.  What is it, aluminum?”

“It’s white gold.  Don’t be a dick.”

“Sorry.  But how long have you known this chick?  You’ve only been going out since like October.”

“We knew each other before that.”  Thor took the ring back and cradled the box defensively against him as he took his coat off and hung it on a peg.

“Even if you don’t subtract all the times you were suffering some sort of head trauma, I think you will be dismayed if you do the math on that.”

“She’s The One.  I knew it the first time I saw her.  I’m going to ask her to marry me tonight.”  Thor took Tony’s coat and hung it next to his.

“Weren’t you concussed the first time you saw her?” Thor’s blush was the only answer he needed.  “You want to get shot down on Christmas?”

“You think she’ll say no?”  Thor looked troubled, as though the possibility had not honestly occurred to him before this moment.

“Not to go all Scrooge on you, but I’m about 99% SURE she will say no.  You’d need a Christmas miracle to even get a maybe.”  Tony was not a man who believed in miracles very often.

“What should I do?”

“Did you keep the receipt?”  Thor looked stricken.    “Listen, you are moving too fast.  Give it some time.  You know your dad will come around eventually, and you can get back Great Grandmother’s eight carat Cartier and do it properly.”

“She doesn’t know about my family.  Loki isn’t like that.”

“I know you’ve been burned in the past, but if she’s as smart as you told me on the phone she’s not going to believe you were born of parthenogenesis.  She’s going to want to know what she’s getting into.”

“I have to try.”  Tony recognized the mulish set of his friend’s jaw from years of playground skirmishes, final exams, and a similar ill-fated conversation from five years before.  “Are you going to help me or not?”

“You know I am,” Tony sighed.  He wished he’d stuck a couple more bottles of booze in his luggage now.  He wasn’t looking forward to watching Thor break another chunk off that big dumb heart of his.  “But can I eat first?  Maybe get a beer?”

“Sure.  She’s at the hospital until 11.  But…” Thor did that thing he did when he was embarrassed, running his fingers through the hair at the back of his head as he looked at the floor.

“But what?”

“There isn’t really any food here.  In my apartment, I mean.”

“When might there be food in your apartment again?”

“A few weeks?  I get the next living expenses allowance from my grant in January.  And Professor Pym said he had some grading I could do.”

“Did you offer to mow his lawn while you were at it?  Jesus, Thor, _please_ tell me you kept the receipt for that thing.  Come on, I passed a diner on the way in and that looked open.  My treat.”

“It really is good to see you,” Thor told him.  He folded Tony into a warm and crushing hug.  “I can’t wait for you to meet her.  You’ll love her!”

“All right, all right, let me go.  I know you only love me for the free pancakes.  Put your coat back on and let’s go.  Im hungry enough to eat greasy eggs and listen to you ramble on about how perfect she is.”

 

Flurries swirled in the door as they entered the diner.  The atmosphere seemed surprisingly festive, carols playing quietly on a radio in the kitchen and a few employees waiting on the handful of customers seated around the restaurant.  They sat in a booth and glanced at the menus, Thor still toying with his coat pocket.

“I’ll have two eggs over easy and a side of toast.  And some coffee, please,” Thor told the waitress.  He set his sticky laminated cardboard down with a hint of regret.

“I think what my friend means to say is he would like the Three Meat Lumberjack Platter with an extra shortstack,” Tony said.  “I’d like the Peanut Butter French Toast Surprise and some OJ.”

“Tony…That’s like fifteen dollars…”

“I hate it when you try to be a cheap date.  Remember me?  I _know_ you.  So just eat it.”  Thor subsided, looking guilty but thrilled at the prospect of a large quantity of pancakes.

“Anything else?” she asked them, grinning.

“It says here you make your own donuts?” Tony asked.

 “That’s right.  Best around.”

“I would like four dozen donuts to go.  I am prepared to be generous if they are hot.”

“You got it,” she said.

“What do you want all those donuts for?” Thor asked after she left.

“Look, you want to ask your girl at work, and I can’t persuade you otherwise.  The donuts are to distract everyone else so you can get her alone.”

“Oh.  That’s a good idea.”

“Of course it is.  Now, tell me about Loki.”

“She’s amazing!  She’s really smart, and funny, I know you two are going to get along great.  And sexy!  She has this little smile that just…does things to me, you have no idea.”

“I’m sure it goes without saying that the sex is awe inspiring.  A religious experience.”

“It will be, I’m sure,” Thor said.  His eyes had the dewy gleam of an idealist.

“Wait, you haven’t even fucked her yet?”

“Don’t be crude, Tony.  And don’t say fuck, it’s Christmas.  No, we haven’t.  She’s special.  I want to wait.”

“Does this hospital have a psych ward attached?  I think you might need to be committed.”

“Tony…”

“No.  Just no.  Shut up and let me eat my french toast.  I can’t deal with you right now.”  Thor sat back and watched the kitchen window for his food as Tony rubbed his eyes.

“But do you think the ring is pretty enough?”

“Odinson, I am warning you.  Actually, why don’t you tell me about your project.  That’s the problem I came down here to solve, after all.”  Thor started slow, resenting the unsubtle change of subject, but he soon warmed to his topic.  He spent the rest of their late dinner going over his research and the problems he had heating the forge, complete with his trademark rambling anecdotes whenever he remembered something interesting, but Tony could only half pay attention around his dread.

 

“Do you absolutely have to wear the hat?” he asked Thor as they walked up the snow-dusted sidewalk to the ER.  The ridiculous Santa hat, perched at what Thor seemed to consider a rakish angle, looked like a prime target for him to snatch, but he didn’t want to risk any of the warm, fragrant, grease-spotted boxes of pastry they carried.

“It’s crucial,” Thor said, rolling his eyes.  “Don’t be the Grinch.”

“Thor,”  Tony darted around the hump of shoveled snow on either side to walk backwards in front of Thor.  “I’m begging you.  Don’t do it.  Let’s just go do something normal that won’t ruin your life here and then we can go back.  I’ll buy you groceries.  We can watch Die Hard.  Anything.  Please.”

“Why are you so against this?  You don’t even know her.”

“ _You_ don’t even know her!  This is crazy!  What if it were me?”

“It would never be you.”

“Because I’m sane.”

“Because you don’t do commitment.”

“Same thing.”

“I’ll tell you what.  I’ll take your advice when you tell your roommate that he’s paying about five percent of the rent on your place because you are madly in love with him.”

“This is not about fucking STEVE, Thor!”

“No, it’s about how you _aren’t_ fucking Steve, because you won’t tell him that you want to. Now come on.  You can be my best man, and I’ll convince Loki to throw the garter your way.”

 

“Come on, Loki,” Natasha told her.  “I’ll cover for you.  You have a surprise waiting.”

“So I hear.  Did you get one already?” Nothing spread faster through the ER than rumors of hot donuts in the break room.

“I got a donut, but I think you’d be mad if I got a piece of what’s waiting for you.  That boy of yours is something else.”

“Thor’s here?”

“Yeah.  Looks like Santa brought you a nice package this year.  Maybe he’ll even let you unwrap it soon.”  She snickered as she traded places with Loki.

“Maybe.”  Thor’s old fashioned notions about sex were a constant source of amusement for her friends, but she no longer took the bait.  She did keep a couple sizes of condom in her purse, though, just to be prepared.

“Loki!” Thor stood by the table full of techs, nurses, the environmental services team, and even a few doctors, all happily eating warm donuts.  She went to him and allowed him to plant a kiss on her forehead.  “Merry Christmas!”

“You too.  Aren’t you popular?”

“Actually the donuts are from Tony.  Remember I told you about him?  Tony, this is Loki.”

“Hey.”  Tony held out a hand and they shook awkwardly.  He looked like he thought she was going to bite, which seemed odd, since according to Thor he was a charmer.

“Nice to meet you.  Thor’s told me a lot about you.”  Loki despised small talk.

“Do you have a minute?”

“Tasha is covering for me, but I have a little while.”

“Great!”  Thor started towing her toward the door.  He shot a broad grin at his friend, but Tony just looked stricken. “Can we go somewhere we can be alone?”

“Probably anywhere without patients or donuts at this point.  Here,” she took him a few feet down the hall and punched her code in to open the locker room door.  At the moment it was abandoned, silent except for the low buzz of the fluorescent lights.  Loki shut them in and pressed herself against him.  “Now, what did you have in mind?”  A quick make out would certainly make the rest of her shift pass more pleasantly.

“I wanted to bring you your gift a little early,” Thor said.  “I’ve been thinking about this a lot.”  He fumbled something out of his pocket, blushing.  “You are a brilliant, funny, gorgeous woman, and I love you so much.  I want to spend the rest of my life making you happy.”  He dropped to one knee and offered her the box.  “Loki, would you consent to be my wife?”

A long moment passed as she struggled to breathe and Thor’s thousand-watt grin started to crack.  She flipped open the box as though she expected it to be full of tiny springy snakes, but the flash of the diminutive diamonds was even worse than a cruel joke.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she finally asked him.  _Why are you ruining everything_ , she wanted to scream.

“Because…I love you.  I want us to be together.”  Whatever he saw in her face, she could tell he knew he’d blown it.

“You love me.”

“Yes!  You don’t have to answer me right now…”

“The answer is no.”

“N…no?”

“No.”

“Oh.  Um, OK.”  Thor lurched to his feet, staring at the floor to avoid looking at her.  “I…guess I’ll get going then.”  He turned and opened the door, but paused for a few heartbeats as if he would speak, or she would.  She sat on the bench and turned away until she heard the door click shut.  Time passed and the motion sensing light went out.  She realized she was still holding the ring box.  Her first instinct was to drop it, or hurl it against a wall, but instead she studied it.  A lovely ring, really.  The stones sat flush with the setting so she wouldn’t have to take it off to don gloves.  And a man who knew next to nothing about her had somehow bought the right size, as well.  She thought about putting it in her locker, but she closed the box and continued to sit in the dark, wondering how long Tasha would cover for her.

 

 

Christmas Eve settled over the Phi Alpha Theta House, but it didn’t bring peace and quiet.  Though only about sixteen of its usual hundred residents remained for Christmas break, they were making up for their missing comrades in a vaguely desperate show of merriment.  Tony had commandeered the couch cushion with the least ominous stains and leaking stuffing and perched at the edge of it, missing Steve and their apartment in Manhattan.  He took in the mingled scents of the season, cheap and oily General Tso’s mixed with spilled beer and the gas station cardboard pine trees that served as ornaments on the improvised tree.  Beneath it all lurked the pervasive funk of undone laundry.  Tony held a vodka and cranberry juice, made from his own hidden stash, and enjoyed the solitude as his young hosts took the party outside to reenact the Battle of Hastings with snowballs.  He figured he had about twenty minutes until he should, as a quasi-responsible adult, go round them up before someone got frostbite or something.  He didn’t want to see Thor’s girlfriend again tonight.

As if summoned by his thoughts, he looked up and she stood in the doorway.  Her gloves and hat matched each other and complemented her smart hunter green peacoat, and she had changed her hospital clogs for sensible snow boots.  She belonged here even less than he did, if possible; both of them looked like they had been picked up by a confused Ghost of Christmas Past and deposited in the foreign land of someone else’s memory.  She clutched a large gift wrapped in elegant green and silver foil paper, and even this matched her coat.

“Looking for Thor?” he asked, keeping his tone neutral.

“Yeah.  He didn’t answer his phone, but a coatless Alfred the Great took a break from making ammo to key me into the building.”

“He’s not coming down,” Tony told her.  “Have a drink?”

“What are the options?”  She looked dubiously at the grime-spattered fridge.

“Here.”  Tony took the flask out of his jacket pocket and handed it over.  “The beer in there tastes like someone drank it already and I wouldn’t use the vodka to clean a toilet seat.”  She took the flask and performed the same couch evaluations Tony had gone through before settling near him on one that wasn’t too crusty.

“Thanks,” she said, taking a neat swig.  “What’s he doing up there?”

“Said he had some papers to grade.” Tony took the flask back and topped up his drink before returning it.  “Which I am able to translate, due to my fluency in Thor Speak, to ‘I want to be alone’.”  Loki took another long pull on the flask and rested it on the package in her lap.  “So what’s in the box?”

“I got him a new coat.  I think the lining of his is held together with duct tape in a couple places.  And I knitted him a hat and scarf.”

“You knitted him a hat and scarf.” Tony repeated with audible incredulity.

“I can knit.  My grandmother taught me,” Loki told him, her tone inviting him to make something of it.

“So can Steve.  That’s my roommate,” he clarified, and the flicker in her sharp eyes told him he still hadn’t gotten to where he could say ‘roommate’ with normal weight and inflection, but she didn’t ask.  “I just thought you must have started it about three days after you met him.  He will love it forever.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” she said, looking down at the gift.

“If I thought you’d meant to hurt him, we’d be dusting off the dueling pistols instead of sharing Stoli on this sketchy frat house sofa.”

“You’d call me out to defend his honor?”

“I absolutely would.  Thor and I go back a long way.”

“We could go a few rounds of bare-knuckle boxing out in the snow if you like.  I’ll be gentle.”

“Nope, shots at twenty paces.  You can’t punch ladies; they don’t fight fair.”  Tony sighed and slumped back against the couch.  “Besides, I agree with you.  He shouldn’t have asked you, but I couldn’t talk him out of it.”

“Did he mean it?  Why would he…”

“Oh, he meant it.  Whatever he told you was the absolute truth in his eyes.  Look, Thor is…intense, but he’s not lying or crazy and he’s not as reckless as his medical records might indicate.  He’s thought this out.  I think he’s really looking for a promise that there’s a future with you before it’s too late.”

“How is proposing to me after two months to get me to keep going out with him not crazy?”

“Did he tell you about his last serious girlfriend?” 

“Exes haven’t come up yet,” she told him with a look that said she had hoped they never would.  “Why?”

“Well, you know about the fight with his dad, right?”  Loki took another drink and shook her head.  “You don’t?  I probably shouldn’t tell you this, any of this, because it’s really Thor’s to tell or not, but I’ve had about three of these too many and my perception of what is a good idea is becoming warped.  Besides, he’ll forgive me anyway.”

“Here’s the thing,” Tony began, gesturing with his glass.  “The Odinsons are old money.  Like Plymouth Rock fucking ancient money.  That’s how we met, actually, because all the twats at our prep school wouldn’t talk to me because my dad is self-made.  I’m nouveau riche, you see.  So gauche.  But he didn’t care and he made them feel like shit for how they treated me.  Since my own family is kind of…distant, it became a tradition for me to spend the holidays with him.”

“Wait, you’re the son of the inventor Howard Stark?  I did a paper on him in school.  He developed about 18 things we use every day in the hospital.”

“That’s me.  Glad that’s how you think of him, I guess.  But what I’m saying is, Thor should be at Oxford or Harvard or something, not slumming it as a teaching assistant at a state school and wearing a coat held together with duct tape.”  Tony took the flask back and topped up his glass, now a pale magenta instead of deep red from the added vodka, and drank.

“So what happened?”

“He fell in love with two incompatible things.  He met this chick Amora when we were doing our undergrad and she went after him hard.  I thought she was bad news but Thor fell for it.  After six months she was waiting to see that giant ancestral diamond like a snake watching a baby bird.”

“She sounds lovely,” Loki said drily.

“Oh she was, at least for him.  She could have won Oscars.  She had him picturing summers in Monaco and 2.5 perfect blonde children.”

“What was the other thing?”

“Dead people.  He took some intro to ancient history class to meet a graduation requirement and that was it.  He changed his major and took extra credits to catch up.  When he told his dad, he threatened to cut him off if he didn’t go back to Business Administration and Thor called his bluff.  He couldn’t afford the tuition without his parents’ money and he transferred here, but I think it just made him more determined.  Hell, I think he respects him for it deep down, and I’m sure he’ll be welcomed back into the flock eventually, but Thor felt like some sort of Massachusetts Ragnarok had begun.  He sold the watch he got when he turned 18 and bought her a ring.  Nicer than yours, I guess, but not the one she was expecting.  He showed up on my doorstep and told me he was road tripping it over to Vassar to pop the question.”

“You were opposed.”  Loki sipped some more vodka and looked out the window where snow had started to fall on the combatants.

“I didn’t handle it very well, I admit.  But I was mad.  He already looked like hell from whatever went down with his dad, and he never has told me everything the old bastard said.  He was all strung out on caffeine and he had this hopeful look like he was going to marry his true love and everything was going to be ok, but I knew it wasn’t.  So I told him what I really thought of her and that I thought he was better off without the faithless, blood-sucking whore.”

“Nice.”

“Only time in our whole friendship I thought he would hit me.  Found out later he’d fractured his wrist slamming it into the doorframe instead of my face.  But he swore he’d never speak to me again and left.  Four days later he hasn’t answered my texts or calls and no one has seen him and I was starting to get frantic, because either she shot him down and he did something stupid or god forbid he was in Vegas for a quickie Elvis wedding and I’d never get her claws out of him.”

“She shot him down.”

“Did she ever.  Laughed in his face and told him she’d been fucking Tiberius Stone, of all fucking people, for a month.”

“Who?”

“Ty’s my ex.  I would say he’s bisexual, but that’s like saying a vulture is omnivorous.  Thor never liked him either, so I guess we have a bad track record.  He thought he was going to blackmail me by threatening to out me to my father, and Thor told him if that continued he’d be shitting his own teeth for a week, and that was the end of it.  Maybe he thought he was getting back at Thor, but I think we can all agree he actually did him a favor akin to jumping on a grenade.”  Tony drained half his drink at the risen shade of horrible exes, and Loki sipped from the flask with a knowing expression on her face.  “Thor finally showed back up on my doorstep and he was just so pathetic I took him back right off.”  Tony, even rather drunk, didn’t mention that Thor had apparently lost almost 24 hours sitting in a bus station in Trenton in a sort of shellshocked fugue, or the two weeks he spent clinging to Tony, reacting to him even leaving the apartment for food as though he was being permanently and utterly abandoned.  He also didn’t mention the things he would do to Amora Encanteur if given half a chance, but he had a creative mind.

“He never told me any of that.”

“But you like him anyway, even as a broke ass graduate student with a penchant for head trauma.”

“Yeah.  Yeah, I guess I do. “  Loki stared off into the middle distance as she said this, as though admitting it to herself.  “Besides,” she said, her lips quirking into a smirk, “Have you seen his abs?”

“That’s not even the best part,” Tony said, smirking back.  “Maybe you should try to talk to him.”

“Thanks for the liquid courage,” Loki said, handing him back his flask.

“You’re welcome.  Guess I had better go round up Thor’s charges.  I sort of told him I’d make sure the holiday party didn’t get too out of hand, and I think he’d take a dim view of frostbite.”

 

Thor rather generously called his room in the dorm an apartment, and it was his great pride and joy.  Larger than any of the others, the Advisor’s room included a coffin sized half bath and enough space for a tiny hotplate, a coffee maker and a mini fridge as well as a small sitting area.  She knocked and waited in the dim, ill-smelling hallway long enough that she nearly turned to go, but Thor opened the door.  He had on a robe, deep amber brown satin highlighting the gold of his messy ponytail, over sweat pants and one of the tee shirts from his prep school wrestling team that he liked so much.  Loki liked them as well; they were very tight in the chest.  His reading glasses sat low on his nose but did nothing to cover up how red his eyes were in his pale face.

“Can I come in?” She asked.  She kept her voice low and firm, just like she did with her patients.  Thor made a noise that wasn’t really a word and moved aside to let her enter.  She took in the room, which he apparently kept clean even when he didn’t know she would be coming over.  He really had been working on something, she saw.  His laptop (which like everything Thor owned was very expensive but noticeably not new) sat on the table next to his favorite armchair along with a stack of books, a couple of pens and highlighters, and a chipped coffee mug.  Used tissues littered the floor around a void left by his feet, and the rest of the box perched on the armrest.

“What are you doing here, Loki?” Thor asked.  He held his robe closed despite being fully clothed under it and began scrabbling to pick up the damp wads of crumpled tissue.

“I came to bring you your present,” she told him, still in her most soothing voice.  “You left before I got the chance.”  She put the box on his desk where a tiny USB Christmas tree slowly cycled through a rainbow of colors, though even the little gift marked ‘Tony’ was enough to dwarf it.

“I thought you didn’t want to see me anymore.  I thought we broke up.”  Thor looked away with an ominous sniffling sound.

“Honey, we aren’t even going steady.”  She could hear the sarcasm creeping into her voice and tried to tone it down.  She put her hand on his forearm, as she had discovered almost right away that Thor listened better if she was touching him.”Look, I know we haven’t talked about it, but I don’t really do boyfriends.  I do one-night stands.  Month long flings.  No strings, no commitment, just a good time while it lasts.  That’s me.”

“So…are you breaking up with me now?”  Thor looked more puzzled than anything else.

“No, you dumbass.  I guess you haven’t noticed, but I’ve been waiting for you.  I don’t do that for just anyone.  I like you, OK?”  She took the ring box out of her coat pocket and held it out to him.  “But I’m not ready for this.  You’re going to have to wait for me awhile.  If I’m ever ready, and please note that I said ‘if’ and not ‘when’, because I’m not promising I will EVER be ready, I will let you know.”  He took it, running his fingers over the soft velveteen before tucking into the pocket of his robe.

“I’m sorry,” Thor said.  “I didn’t mean…I didn’t mean to freak you out.  I just wanted to know you would stay.”

“Tony told me about Amora,” she said.  Thor’s eyes widened and he ducked his face to the floor, fingers tugging through his loose hair.

“He did?”

“Yeah.  He’s been enjoying the Christmas spirits with the rest of your guard puppies, but I think he wanted to help.”

“It’s not about her, really!  Just forget…”

“Shut up, Thor.  Honestly.  Listen to me.  I already have a ring,” she said, and tugged a chain out of her scrub top and unbuttoned coat.  Two dainty rings lay against her heart, a white gold diamond solitaire and a matching wedding band.  “This is part of my problem,” she admitted.

“Are those yours?”

“After a fashion.  They were my mother’s.  She died three years ago and left them to me.”

“I…I’m sorry, Loki.  What happened?”  Thor’s arms went out to take her in an embrace but Loki held back, hugging herself with her eyes focused on something only she could see.

“Triple negative BRCA2.  Do you know what that is?”

“Bad?”

“Very.  Aggressive early onset breast cancer.  Nothing I…nothing they did seemed to matter, and it ate her alive.”

“Loki, I…”

“It’s genetic,” she continued as though she feared stopping.  “As her daughter, it would probably get me, too.”

“Is that why you don’t want anyone too close?”

“No.  Quit interrupting.  Right before the end, mom took me aside and confessed that I didn’t need to worry, because I wasn’t her daughter.  She and my father had two boys and they said she couldn’t have more, but she wanted a girl.  So they adopted me as a baby.  She was never going to tell me at all.” Loki took a deep breath and looked up at Thor.  “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“You told me to quit interrupting,” Thor said.  “But I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.”

“Good boy.  You do learn,” Loki smiled at him.  “So I guess I don’t want anyone else who can leave me.  I’m not really over it, if we’re being honest.  It explained why my father always seemed so distant, at least.  And she left me enough to go back to school or put a down payment on a house, but she was always so proud of her daughter the nurse.  It’s a Jewish thing.  I knew she’d want me to be a nurse practitioner, and the work kept me going.  So now we know each other’s deep dark secrets,” she said it like snapping a book shut, and when she tucked the rings back under her shirt Thor could tell she didn’t want to talk about the past anymore.  “Unless you have an illicit love child or a series of hooker murders you’d like to tell me about?  Now would be a good time.”

“I didn’t know you were Jewish,” Thor admitted.

“Is it a problem?” Loki asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Of course not.  But I would have asked you at Hannukah.  I feel like an idiot.”

“That’s because you _are_ an idiot, darling,” Loki told him fondly.  “I’m not getting engaged tonight, but if you’d like to take our relationship to another level of seriousness, that could be negotiated.”  She slid her hands under the lapels of his robe and stroked up to his pectorals, feeling the heat of his skin through the soft, worn cotton of his shirt.  His whole body shuddered when she brushed her thumbs over his nipples.  She kept one hand making lazy circles on his chest while she lowered the other to tug at the belt of his robe and the waistband of his sweatpants.

“Loki, are you sure this is what you want to do?  I mean I can wait…”  Thor’s breath quickened and his face began to turn pink.  He seemed caught between escape and surrender.

“I showed up to our third date with lube, condoms, and vibrating nipple clamps in my purse.  I think I’m ready, sweetheart.”

“You…you did?  You like that kind of stuff?” Thor at last put his arms around her as her hands roamed further under his clothes.

“Who said they were all for me?  It’s a shame we’re getting stuck here instead of at my place,” she said with a gesture at the deepening snow outside.  “I could show you the wide selection of stuff I like.”  She guided him back toward his bed, glad it was at least a queen size that took up about a quarter of his floor space.  He still hadn’t stopped her, so she slipped her hand down the front of his loose pants until she cupped the heat of his cock, slowly running her fingers up the shaft.  Thor made a marvelous growling noise that she immediately wanted to hear again.  She leaned into him and asked him, low and husky, “So, Thor, what do you think?  Would you consent to be my boyfriend?”

“Yes, Loki, _yes_ …” Something broke free in Thor at last and he grabbed her, tipping back onto the bed with her on top of him.  His fingers were in her hair, tugging it free of her elastic, and his lips were warm as he kissed her earlobe.  His scent of coffee and soap mixed with the faint whiff of snow from her coat as she straddled him and returned his kiss.

“Good.  I’m glad you accept.  Now fuck me like I made the right decision.”

 

 

Tony returned to find the door to Thor’s room locked with a pair of sweatpants hanging from the knob.  This was their deeply ingrained roommate code; a sock meant he needed private time, but any other article of clothing meant a date, and since they looked like the same pair he’d been wearing when Tony went downstairs, he got the hint.  Below them on the grody carpet was a key and a note, scrawled in red pen on the back of what looked like the cover sheet of someone’s term paper.  SORRY TONY, it read in Thor’s hurried and unmistakable blocky handwriting.  HERE IS THE KEY TO 304 DOWN THE HALL.  IT’S EMPTY.  -T

“Really?”  Tony asked, though he couldn’t help but smile.  Below the signature the note continued.  P.S. YOU ARE THE BEST.  MERRY CHRISTMAS.  It did not mention seeing him in the morning.  _But my toothbrush is in there_ , he thought.

“Merry Christmas to you too, buddy,” he said quietly.  “Looks like you got your miracle.”  He took the key and started down the hall, taking his phone out of his pocket.  He thumbed down the contacts until he got to Steve.  He’d just be getting home from Midnight Mass.  “Maybe I can have one of my own.”  He pushed send, and waited for the call to connect.


End file.
